Flying/Bouncing across the snow

If you ever get the chance to go snowmobiling, do it!  But wear a sports bra. 

We started the balmy Wednesday morning (c.-12 degrees) in the bar again to watch another video on snowmobiling then, once we'd been issued our helmets, hopped on.  There were two to a snowmobile, but because I'm by myself I got one of my own.  I'm told that if you are going across fresh snow, it's a nice smooth ride.  But we were following trails and going quite slow (about 20kmh) to start with.  I'd told our guide (Scotty) the night before that I had a tendency to crash things so he made me take the snowmobile behind him.  This turned out quite well because it meant that I could follow where he went and (hopefully) find the not so bumpy bits. 

The snowmobiles are like large jetskis.  The handlebars have heaters in them as does the accelerator on the right hand handlebar.  You almost never use the brake - taking your finger a bit off the accelerator slows it down very well, but it's quite sensitive and takes a bit of getting used to so you don't kangaroo jump down the trail.  The helmets have visors, but you can't take them all the way down otherwise they freeze over.  The visibility with them part way down was pretty crap too so I left my up - very breezy on the face.

The first bit of the trail wends its way through trees and we stayed at about 30kmh so that we could enjoy the scenery.  It's also means you're less likely to have an accident.  Our first stop was the top of a hill where the trees are almost entirely covered in snow.  I took the opportunity to make a snow angel.  It's quite a long way before you get to the first lake where the speed limit is considerably higher.  Scotty waited until we had all caught up and then shot off across the lake.  Being a good student, I followed.... I may have even shouted a bit of a 'wooohoooo' as I sped across the ice (the bikes are limited but I got up to about 110kmh).  It's actually less bumpy and easier to control the snowmobile when you're going quicker.  It still bounces a bit but you give it a bit of freedom to move otherwise you spend the entire time fighting it. 

There were quite a few lakes that we had to cross before lunch so I had lots of adrenaline to keep me warm.  Lunch was at another hotel in an enclosed teepee (I've found out it's called a kotta here) and was fried pork, reindeer luncheon, cheese and mayonnaise on flat potato bread with a very nice hot lingonberry juice.  We had a bit of a look around the hotel and it has a large (comparatively) swimming hole but none of us were brave enough too go in.  After lunch, we had to suffer the hardship of going back across all those lakes....  Scotty let me go first on one of them so I got to experience the crossing without the spray of snow in front obscuring the view. 

We were travelling quite quickly so we did an extra loop through some really nice forest (all the forest is nice - there's something about trees covered in snow).  We got back to the hotel at about 3pm having covered about 70 kilometres during the day (most trips do about 50km). 

I'm not sure whether I enjoyed the huskies or the snowmobiles more.  The huskies was a 'wow, this is amazing' experience whereas the snowmobile was a 'wooohooo' experience.  But I didn't hit a tree in the snowmobile so I think that might win by a small margin.